Photos: Raw Vegan Fruity Oaty Bar

For the last decade or so, my health has been in decline. Not steep, I’ve never been in great shape and have had a weight problem and joint/back problems since I was a child. I’ve always wanted to change my lifestyle and eating habits (I’m actually very active, but you wouldn’t know it to look at me!), but for various reasons, I didn’t have much choice in what I could and couldn’t eat. Some reasons are too painful to get into, but the last few years it’s just been a simple as not being able to afford more than rice and tea.

If I couldn’t afford it, I couldn’t have it, and in such a small town you don’t have big superstores or health food stores so you need to buy once for the month, and it has to keep. Actually, I’ll let John Cheese explain living in poverty to you, he’s better at it than I am! But as of late, with new work opportunities and some help from my parents, I’ve started finally moving in the direction I had always wanted to.

I’m not going raw, or vegan, but I’m certainly headed that way. It would have been a regular diet change (the kind everyone tells you about, eat less and move more, no sugar, carbs, high protein, low fat) if it hadn’t been for a couple of great documentaries I caught on Netflix. If you’re in the U.S. and have Netflix Instant, you can check out Knives Over Forks and Food Matters via instant streaming.

It does seem drastic, doesn’t it? Which is why I’m not doing it all at once, I don’t think I could handle it. But I am trying to reduce the amount of meat I eat, I have already pretty much eliminated processed sugar (both cane and beet) as well as nearly all dairy, though I do still eat active culture yogurt. But I had to start somewhere, and because the change did take it’s toll on me I decided to go looking for a not-so-guilty treat to make poor old me feel better, and I found it in this delicious Raw Fudgy Brownies recipe from This Rawsome Vegan Life (LOVE this blog!).

Well, I removed the chocolate (you can’t get raw chocolate here, anyway), added almonds and prunes, replaced the coconut oil with safflower oil (coconut oil is a tad too heavy for me) and ground it up in my Nutribullet – Voila! Fruity Oaty Bars! Want to see the result?

I just basically shaped it with a spoon after dumping the fruity goodness out of the Nutribullet and into my cereal bowl, then let it sit for a few minutes to ‘gel’. I also like to replace the dates with raisins if I want something a bit sweeter!

XOXO